Optical waveguides frequently have to be spliced at points where access is difficult, for example in the area of cable junctions which are buried in the ground or on a mast. In general, not much space is available for the person carrying out the work in this case. In particular, there is often no flat surface available in order to place the splicer down at the splicing location. For example, it is thus often impossible, after exposing a cable junction in the ground, to place the splicer down close to the optical waveguides to be spliced. When splicing optical waveguides on a cable mast, there are in general likewise only very restricted options for positioning the splicer nearby in the area of the optical waveguides to be spliced.
There is therefore a need for a splicer which can be used as a handheld appliance. In the case of an appliance such as this, there should, if possible, no longer be any need to place the appliance down on a fixed base. In fact, the appliance should be operable by one hand, while the person carrying out the work can operate it using the other hand. In this case, it should be possible to carry out all the processing steps which are required to carry out a splicing process, using the handheld splicer. This relates in particular to preprocessing steps for preparation of an optical waveguide for a splicing process, such as removal of a fiber coating, cleaning of the fiber and subsequent processing of the break point with a cutter. Furthermore, of course, it should also be possible to carry out the subsequent splicing process and the shrinking of a shrink sleeve onto the splicing point using the splicer, operated with one hand.